When the global financial system meets blockchain: the duel between two visionaries

Global finance is experiencing a critical moment of transformation. While Ripple has built a parallel alternative to the old system over a decade, Swift has decided to take an even bolder step: directly integrating blockchain into its infrastructure. During the Sibos 2025 conference in Frankfurt, Swift announced the addition of a blockchain-based shared ledger, officially opening the doors to what could be the true convergence between traditional and decentralized finance.

The decisive moment: Swift embraces Ethereum Layer 2

The news was confirmed during Token2049 in Singapore: Swift has chosen Linea, an Ethereum Layer 2 network, as the foundation of its new settlement platform. This choice is not accidental. Over 30 major global financial institutions—JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citibank, and others—are already ready to participate in the pilot project.

The underlying technology deserves attention: Linea uses zk-EVM (zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine), which guarantees immediate final confirmations through mathematical proofs. For Swift and its partner banks, this means something concrete: 24/7 real-time settlements, reduced latency, and significantly lower costs. Unlike the Optimistic Rollup used by other L2 (which require days of dispute periods), zk-EVM offers the capital flow speed that financial institutions demand.

The number is impressive: Swift manages about $150 trillion in annual payments. If the blockchain platform achieves full efficiency with instant settlement, tens of trillions of dollars—currently immobilized as pre-funded reserves to cover settlement delays across time zones, from the US to Asia and Europe—would be freed and reintroduced into the real economy.

The challenge for Ripple: ten years of sacrifices, but the wall remains standing

In 2012, Ripple launched XRP Ledger with a clear goal: to replace the inefficient Swift correspondent banking model. For over a decade, the company has built RippleNet, connecting over 300 financial institutions through the On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service. The results are impressive on paper: cross-border settlement times reduced from days to 3-5 seconds, payment volumes doubled to around $30 billion by 2022.

Yet, despite legal victories—in particular the 2023 ruling that XRP is not inherently a security, and the final resolution of the battle with the SEC in August 2025—Ripple remains in a weaker position. Its network currently covers about 40 payment markets and collaborates with over 20 countries to develop CBDC platforms. In the retail sector, it has tangible successes: SBI Remit in Japan uses XRP for transfers to the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia; Santander offers transparency and speed through One Pay FX. American Express and PNC Bank, at the corporate level, rely on RippleNet to optimize commercial settlements.

However, compared to Swift—covering over 200 countries and more than 11,000 financial institutions—Ripple operates on a much smaller scale.

The decisive advantage: asset neutrality versus dependence on XRP

This is the core of the issue. Ripple’s ODL model heavily depends on XRP as a bridge currency: the volatility risk falls on the participants. Swift’s blockchain ledger, on the other hand, is designed to support a variety of assets: fiat currencies, stablecoins, CBDCs. The thousands of banks in the Swift system can achieve instant settlement simply by updating their infrastructure, without taking on market risk on a single asset.

This “asset neutrality” combined with Linea’s technical advantages creates a difficult-to-overcome barrier. Global financial institutions will have an option that offers both speed and compliance, without introducing asset volatility.

What it means for the global financial sector

Swift’s decision to build on Ethereum Layer 2 is not just a technological modernization. It is the official confirmation that blockchain will become the core of mainstream finance. The old model of correspondent banking—with its manual reconciliation complexities, time delays across US time zones and other regions, and massive capital immobilization—is about to be surpassed.

A shared ledger, verified via smart contracts and operating 24/7, will eliminate fragmentation between tokenization networks. For the first time, global financial institutions will be able to transfer value with the same immediacy and certainty that only decentralized systems have demonstrated they can offer.

Ripple has opened a door in the wall of the traditional system. Swift is about to demolish the entire wall—and the sector will never be the same.